Storm Shelters Unprepared For Disabled

By GRETCHEN PARKER The Tampa Tribune

Published: May 14, 2007

A Pinellas County nonprofit group that cares for hundreds of developmentally disabled residents got some bad news last summer when administrators found out the hurricane-proof windows being installed on their building were causing the place to crumble.

No problem, they thought. They started looking for another, more secure building. Meanwhile, they drew up a plan for taking 280 clients, some with severe behavioral problems, with them to a public shelter.

Then they got more bad news.

County emergency planners told them: No way.

There is not enough room for all average evacuees to gather in hurricane shelters, emergency officials said. It's not possible, they said, to cram in vanloads of people with a litany of conditions that require near-constant attention.

Now the Pinellas agency, PARC, is preparing to raise the $3.5 million it needs to buy a building and harden it into a hurricane shelter. HARC, a similar group in Hillsborough County, is well into its own fund drive, and its building, designed to withstand a Category 3 storm, is under construction.

Neither will be finished by the official start of hurricane season, June 1.

Both agencies took the initiative after concluding that although government holds them responsible for the vulnerable people they serve, it offers little substantial help in planning for emergencies or in protecting them in the hours before and during a storm.

Government depends on these agencies to come up with evacuation and shelter plans, doesn't welcome them into public shelters and offers no alternatives.

Unlike its system for the frail and elderly, local government has no system of registering and keeping track of the developmentally disabled. Statewide, there are about 30,000 of them in evacuation zones, PARC estimates.

Local government has no authority to regulate the emergency planning of any group home or institution that serves the developmentally disabled. At most, emergency officials review the plans administratively without testing them, and the state Agency for Health Care Administration issues a license.

In the case of some group homes, the state Agency for Persons With Disabilities gives the license; emergency plans never are formally reviewed by local officials. There are 173 such homes in Hillsborough, Pinellas and Pasco counties.

MacDonald Training Center of Tampa is responsible for 21 people who live in evacuation zones. When a storm threatens, they bunk them in homes and apartments with other disabled clients who live on higher ground, said Mara Brad, director of services.

"All this works as long as we don't have anything major -- a Category 3 or up," she said.

Closed-Door Policy Isn't Written

Local administrators who care for the disabled acknowledge that a public shelter is the last place they want to be in a storm. Everyone agrees it would be a chaotic, potentially dangerous situation.

The conditions of the developmentally disabled include mental retardation, severe autism, Down syndrome and late-stage Alzheimer's. Some are physically impaired as well.

"I'm not going to say we're not welcome, but they prefer we come last," said Richard Lilliston, chief executive officer of HARC. "It's not stated in any policy, but it's sort of an unwritten agreement."

He added: "We're OK with that."

He knows the 48 people who live in his group homes would rather not camp in an unfamiliar school gym with hundreds of people they've never seen before. If the lights go out, he would rather his charges batten down with one another, doubled up in a home with a supervisor.

Still, he admits that the situation is tenuous. When phone contact is lost, rain is blowing and winds are raging, someone has to drive to that disconnected home and make sure everyone is safe, Lilliston said.

That's why his agency began, about five years ago, to look for a better private shelter. Leaders picked out one of their program buildings, 14,500 square feet, for the duty.

Even though Hillsborough emergency planners aren't required to review Lilliston's plans, one came out to look at the big building and say whether it was safe. It wasn't.

It was HARC's own initiative that pressed Lilliston to raise money for a private shelter.

No one required him to come up with a better plan than what he had: shuttling residents, from Lutz to south Riverview, in the hours before a storm crashes ashore. None of the homes is in a flood zone, but not all could survive high winds, he said.

"We thought we had enough safe places," Lilliston said. "Katrina and Charley and Ivan showed us -- clearly we needed to take another step. And we've taken that other step."

HARC's shelter, which also will operate as an activities center when it's finished in October, is part of a new campus of buildings going up with $5 million in federal Housing and Urban Development grants and a half-million dollars in private donations. Lilliston still needs to raise another half-million dollars.

Registry Of Need Sought

PARC came up with an even more ambitious plan after leaders were told by the Pinellas County Emergency Operations Center not to plan on using public shelters -- even special needs shelters.

Administrators realized developmentally disabled residents statewide are in the same predicament. Without public shelter, they were on their own.

PARC is especially concerned about those with severe disabilities, those who have physical and behavior problems that require at least one-on-three, 24-hour supervision. In the region from Pasco to Sarasota counties, there are nearly 16,000 such residents, it estimates.

What the agency proposes in essence is to do what it thinks government should be doing: registering anyone with a severe developmental disability anywhere in the state who wants to stay in the shelter during a storm.

The state has pledged $2 million, if PARC can raise the remaining $3.5 million. The shelter would be designed to withstand a Category 5 hurricane.

Again, it was PARC's decision initially to try to harden its building and then to look for new shelter. Officially, its old emergency plans are approved by county emergency planners and by its state licensing agency.

The fact that PARC's old plan was approved -- and that it called for sheltering at least 70 people with severe disabilities in a building that could withstand only a Category 2 storm -- is frightening, said Sue Buchholz, president and chief executive officer of PARC.

"As long as anybody has an approved plan, their approved plan might be like PARC's," she said.

No Guarantees In Storm Planning

Pinellas emergency planners counter by saying they have to concentrate on the health care facilities in evacuation zones, including the 6,000 nursing home beds; PARC is not in such a storm surge zone. They also say each facility knows itself best and that it doesn't make sense for outside planners to draft an evacuation plan.

There aren't enough county emergency coordinators -- four in all -- to evaluate the safety of buildings that aren't in evacuation zones, said David MacNamee, one of the coordinators. It was a private engineer who warned PARC its building was not safe.

The law regarding large facilities like PARC's is similar to those for nursing homes and hospitals. They cannot depend on public shelters.

"Otherwise, all of our shelters would be filled up with nursing home and hospital patients and there wouldn't be any room for the general public," MacNamee said.

If PARC or another agency showed up at a shelter with busloads of disabled people needing refuge, shelter managers would let them in, MacNamee said. "But we would certainly question them afterward about why they didn't come up with a better plan."

Emergency planners from Hillsborough and Pinellas emphasize that no one should depend on government to take care of them.

Officials can only offer help if there are no other avenues. And there are no guarantees, especially for those who are the most vulnerable.

"The more you dig into this, the scarier it gets," MacNamee said. "We try to make sure everyone has someplace to go and has a plan, but anything that's on paper may or may not survive first contact."